Hi,

I found this in my yard, Western Australia near Perth. It's about 33mm long and I'm intrigued to find out what it is.

Please view the picture here.

Kind regards,
William

*****

William,

Fantastic picture! This insect is in fact a wasp from the family Tiphiidae, commonly called flower wasps or simply tiphiid wasps.

This particular specimen is a female Thynnine wasp. All female species of the subfamily Thynninae are wingless and can often be seen scaling an elevated structure like a flower or a tree (or in your case, a fence) in order to catch the attention of a passing male. Unlike females, Tiphiid males do have wings and will literally sweep the receptive female off her feet for an extended in-flight mating ritual that also involves treating the female to several easy meals along the way (flower nectar being much more accessible from the air).

Winglessness in female tiphiid wasps finally proves useful when, after mating, the gravid female must burrow underground to find a suitable repository for her eggs, namely scarab beetle larvae. Interestingly, winglessness or brachyptery (reduced wings) in wasps often goes hand in hand with this kind of parasitism and occurs in at least eight other wasp families. This frequently leads to confusion with ants, of course, but you can consult our post on one particularly notorious wasp family with wingless females, the mutillids (deceptively referred to as velvet ants), to learn more about some of the differences.

Thanks for your query,

Alexandra Westrich & the AntAsk Team

Hi

I found your blog whilst looking for information about ants. I found
this large, winged, ant strolling around my kitchen today. 2cm long and
with a bright red body with black tip. It raised its tail end a couple
of times when I gently nudged it with a piece of paper - as though it
may have attempted to sting. I let it go in the garden - but I'm just
curious to know what it is. Is it a common ant? Are there likely to be
more? And should I be concerned that there may be a colony in my
house? Oh yes - and I live in Catalonia, Spain.

Any ideas please?
thanks in advance

kind regards
Dena

Dear Dena -

Thanks for your inquiry and the accompanying photos. And I have to inject here, lucky you living in Catalonia, my favorite part of Spain! By the way, it may interest you to know that there is an active group of professional and amateur ant enthusiasts in Spain, many of them around Barcelona, and they communicate at an online forum - www.lamarabunta.org.

Your critter, as it turns out, is not an ant, but a related insect. Your pictures show one of the solitary hunting wasps in the family Sphecidae. Both ants and wasps, as well as bees and sawflies, are in the insect order Hymenoptera. I don't know wasps as well as ants, but I believe yours is the common European grasshopper-hunting species Prionyx lividocinctus. You need not worry that there is a colony of them in the house, nor even outside, since they live a solitary life. I appreciate that you took the care to return it to the outdoors.

James Trager & the AntAsk Team

Hi,

I have a question I hope you can answer for me.

I have recently started my own ant colony which is currently thriving. The ants have even created a new nest which is full of larvae at various stages of development.

I may need to provide a bigger habitat for them in future judging by how many larvae there seems to be in the new nest. However I'm not sure how long it takes the for an ant to go from a new laid larvae to an ant that's ready to go.
Could you give me some idea of the timeline for this?

The ant species I have is Polyrhachis Australis.
Any information you can provide me with would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Michael

Dear Michael:

Congratulations on your thriving colony of the beautiful, shiny black Polyrhachis australis, seen at this link from the Oz Animals website http://www.ozanimals.com/Insect/Dome-backed-Spiny-Ant/Polyrhachis/australis.html>, in two lovely images . This is one of the lesser known weaver ants, that builds nests above ground, of leaves and other plant parts, bound together with larval silk. Note that the correct format for this and all scientific names is always with the first part (genus) capitalized, and the second part (species name) always in lower case.

It turns out you've asked a question, about devlopment time of ants, that has many answers, depending on the sort of ant that one is considering. The development of an ant from an egg laid by the queen to an adult ant can take a little over three weeks to almost two years, depending on the species and the climate in which the ant lives. I admit to no personal experience with observing the development of Polyrhachis, but based on my experience with related ants in the genus Camponotus, I would guess eggs in your colony would complete development to adult workers in 6-10 weeks. In other words, now would be a great time to prepare for the expansion of the colony!

Maybe you can send us in a nice picture or two of them in the future . . .

James Trager & the AntAsk Team

Dear AntAsk,
I live in Puerto Rico and am wondering about a tiny ant whose bite
continues to burn after it bites and likes to eat cotton clothing. And
scurries in and out of electronic equipment like my comptuer keyboard
and my other electronic things like the dials on my electric guitar.
They also like paper. and books - I see them outside where they like
very dry wood and leaves - and digest dry wood as well. They look just
like ants - act just like ants - How do I get rid of them as I can't
spray my equipment. and my clothes.

Thanks

Sonja

Dear Sonja,

Thanks for contacting AntBlog. Chances are you have one of two species: Wasmannia auropunctata or Monomorium destructor. Wasmannia workers are all the exact same size and their bodies tend to be all the same color (they can be light or dark, but it's usually one or the other). Monomorium destructor are red-brown in the front part of their bodies, and darker in the back. Their workers are different sizes: within one foraging trail, you'll often see workers that are twice as big as the smallest ones, and there will be sizes between those two. Monomorium destructor has more of a tendancy to damage clothing (like you mentioned) and electrical equipment, but both species (and many others) will nest in a variety of small containers like electrical boxes and clothing drawers.

In previous posts (click here, here, here ), we've outlined some general strategies for getting rid of ants using commercially availible poisons like Borax. I would add putting items in the freezer for 24 hours will often kill them in small electronic items (and anything else you can fit in the freezer).

You also might want to check out the website of our friend, Cas Vanderwoude in Hawaii:
http://www.littlefireants.com/
He has some useful tips there for how to get rid of Wasmannia auropunctata, and the research his team is doing to fight this invasive species.

Good luck! Sorry you're having so much trouble with these ants!
Best,
Jesse Czekanski-Moir & the AntAsk Team

Hi,

I have a question i hope you can answer for me.

I have recently started my own ant colony which is currently thriving. The ants have even created a new nest which is full of larvae at various stages of development.

I may need to provide a bigger habitat for them in future judging by how many larvae there seems to be in the new nest. However im not sure how long it takes the for an ant to go from a new layed larvae to an ant thats ready to go.
Could you give me some idea of the timeline for this?

The ant species i have is Polyrhachis Australis.
Any information you can provide me with would be grately appreciated.

Regards, Michael

Hello Michael:

Congratulations on your thriving Polyrhachis australis colony.

The question of how long it takes an ant to develop from egg to adult has been studied in only a relative few of the 14000 or so known kinds of ants. Most of the ones studied are those which infest buildings or are agricultural pests. Two house infesting ants, the Pharaoh ant Monomorium pharaonis and the ghost ant Tapinoma melanocephalum develop quite quickly, about three weeks from the laying of an egg by the queen to an adult worker, while fire ants Solenopsis invicta take about a month from egg to adult. On the other hand, some Myrmica species from the cold north of Siberia and Canada may take about two years to complete their development.

Unfortunately, your Polyrhachis australis fall into the category of ants whose development has not been studied. But I would estimate, based on my experience with related ants, that they complete their development in 8-12 weeks, in part depending on temperature. In other words, you might want to prepare for the rapid expansion of your colony with additional nesting space, sooner than later.

James C. Trager & the AntAsk Team

Dear AntAsk,
My name is Hadar and I live in Israel. I am the owner of the company for pest control in Israel that specializes in the extermination of ants using baits
During the last five years we are dealing with the failure of eradication of the species Plagiolepis. We've tried most types of bait offered the U.S. pesticide market without success. Needless to say that spraying pesticides is not effective at all.
We tried various baits containing borax or fipronil or abamectin B1 imidiachloropid.
The baits contain honey dew or protein. Often appears in the attraction of that work and "workers" vigorously and after a while sometimes minutes, sometimes days after the placement of abandoned ant bait
Can I get some information about the lifestyles of this ant? Such as:
What kind of diet prefers this species?
Is there more than one queen in the nest?
How to deal with this pest
This species is very common throughout the country from north to south
Unfortunately, an Israeli research on this species is not done yet
Please help
Sincerely
Hadar

Dear Hadar,

Sorry to hear that you're having trouble with Plagiolepis. Although only a few species have been studied in depth, it seems that there is evidence of polygyny (multiple queens in the same colony) in every species in which this quality has been looked for ( P. pygmaea, P. xene, P. taurica, P. schmitzii, and P. maura - data and references in Thurin et al. 2011; DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05161.x).

As for what your Plagiolepis eats in the wild, it is likely that even if we did know what species you were working with, there would not be a complete, published study that would answer this question. What is more important is that you continue to experiment with baits to which this ant might be attracted that you can mix with the appropriate poisons. Invasive ant expert Cas Vanderwoude (http://www.littlefireants.com) explains:

We have Plagiolepis alluaudi here in Hawai`i. They seem fairly "skittish" and do not seem to feed on any particular food source. I think they are present in homes more for water than anything else.

My standard approach would be to offer a buffet of food items that they might feed on, add a toxicant to the most attractive item and bait with that mixture. So Hadar, try a little (1)peanut butter, (2) jam or jelly, and (3) spam or tuna or fish flavored cat food. Also, try water. Put it in a vial filled with cotton wadding so the ants can "suck" the water from the wadding. You might be surprised - it might be water they recruit to most! If that's the case, thank my friend Evan Harris for that suggestion... if water and sugar are both attractive, you can make a nice attractant out of sugar water (25% sugar) and place it in the vials mentioned previously.

Adding a toxicant is the next step. If you have fipronil it will be the most effective. The most important thing is the dose. DO NOT OVER-DOSE!!! For fipronil, use only 0.1g/kg bait mix - NO MORE! The effective range will be 0.01-0.1 g/kg active ingredient. Any more and it will take effect too soon and leave the queen(s) unaffected. Repeat baiting every 6-8 weeks."

In addition to Cas's tips, I would add that it is important to apply poison at an effective spatial scale. If you're going to poison the ants in one person's house, but they live two meters away from a large colony, there is a very strong likelihood of re-infestation. Cas's point about re-applying baits is also very important; no treatment will kill 100% the first time. Often, treatments will kill around 90% of the ants at most, so it is important to keep re-applying the pesticide at the right time intervals. Ants do not eat while they are in their pupal stage (something like the cocoon a caterpillar makes before becoming a butterfly), so re-applying pesticides while the same ants are in their pupal stages will not increase the effectiveness of the treatment.

For further information about dealing with invasive ants, I'd encourage you to check out Cas's website (above). For example, there is some information on treating potted plants for pests by submerging them in water at 45C which might be useful for some situations.

I hope this helps!
Best,
Jesse Czekanski-Moir, Cas Vanderwoude, and the AntAsk Team

Hi,
I was in Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica where I took this photo (sorry about the quality) of what I think is Camponotus sericeiventris. As you can see, the ant is walking over a sticky, black substance with no apparent problem. The whole trunk of the tree was covered in this substance - is it anything to do with the ants?

Many thanks
Alan

*****
Alan,

Thank you for contacting AntBlog and including an image. We contacted an expert on the ants of Costa Rica, Dr. John T. Longino, to address your question. Here is what Dr. Longino had to say:

"Your ant is indeed Camponotus sericeiventris. I've often seen tree trunks with black, sticky, oozy areas, and ants often seem to be attracted to them. I have always surmised that these are tree infections, a result of wounds and/or pathogens, and that the tree sap is oozing out and evaporating, making a sweet exudate that ants might like. I doubt that the ants are the cause of the exudate.

From the look of your image, the area looks wet but not super sticky. Ants have no problem walking over wet surfaces. Also, if a sticky surface gets a "skin" of moisture or dryness, that would make it easy for an insect to walk over. We might touch a surface and break that thin surface layer, contacting the sticky material below. So a surface that seems sticky to us might not be to an insect.

By the way, I did my graduate work in Corcovado, back in early 1980's, and developed my love of ants there."

John "Jack" Longino (guest expert), Corrie Moreau & the AntAsk Team

Hi,
I want to make an ant farm from a small aquarium I bought, but I need an ant queen. I don't want to dig up an existing colony. Would having a queen overpopulate the colony? How would I find a queen after its mating flight? I live in Arizona and it's October. I've heard that you need to look for a small hole with a small pile of dirt by it. I haven't seen any. Will ants make a larvae turn into a queen if there is no queen present like bees do? What time is mating season for ants in Arizona? Should I wait until mating season starts? -Austin

Hi Austin!

Thanks for contacting us! Digging up a colony to find the queen can sometimes be very hard. Often, the queen is hidden very deep in the soil and you might not find her. It might be easier to wait until next season for a newly mated queen.

James Trager has shared his expertise on the times when to expect newly mated queens of some ant species that are encountered in Arizona and are fun to keep in a formicarium. Here is his advice:

"Pogonomyrmex and Myrmecocystus flights are tied to rains, either monsoon, or spring, depending on the species.

Higher altitude, forest species of Camponotus fly on the first really warm days of spring, typically in April, May. Lower altitude species of oak-conifer woodlands, mesquite scrubland and true desert mostly fly with the first monsoon rains.

Finally, Formica species fly in July, especially early in the month, except the really high altitude ones, which may wait till August."

Here you can find more information on the ants of Arizona.

A queen would not overpopulate a colony. It is usually a good idea to have a queen, so that your ant colony lives past two month. The workers often die after this short time period and a queen would always supply new workers. Some of the larvae will turn into new queens, but they need to mate before they can lay fertilized eggs. It is very hard and often impossible to have ants mate in captivity. So it is best to find a freshly mated queen. You should keep your eyes open for several winged ant queens and keep one individual each in a small container. If one starts laying eggs, you can carefully transfer her to the bigger aquarium.

Here , here , and here are some other posts that might be helpful for you.

Good luck with your ant farm!

James Trager, Steffi Kautz & the AntAsk Team

Dear Sirs,

What looks like a flying ant appeared at the beginning of the rainy season, a few days ago, in great numbers, in Zanzibar

They are not aggressive, no bite so far

Could you tell me more about it?

Many thanks and Kind regards

Anne

Dear Anne,

Thanks very much for your question! According our very own experts on Malagasy and East African ants, Brian Fisher, it's a queen Camponotus maculatus. The genus Camponotus occurs on all continents except Antarctica and is probably the second most diverse genus of ants (after Pheidole). Camponotus maculatus is widely distributed in East Africa, and forms that are either closely related, or within the same species also occur from the Middle East to insular Southeast Asia.

Like many members of their genus, they probably nest in dead sections of living trees or vines. They are most likely generalist omnivores that will eat everything from nectar to dead insects. Camponotus are members of the ant subfamily Formicinae, and all of these ants have lost their stings and instead have the ability to spray formic acid. This is a very effective weapon against other insects and spiders, but unless it gets directly in your eyes or an open wound, you won't feel a thing.

In the tropics and warm temperate deserts of the world, many ant species will have mating flights right after the first big rain of the rainy season. You may continue to see flying queens and males, but this will probably be the biggest swarm you see this year.

I hope this helps!
Best,
Jesse Czekanski-Moir & the AntAsk Team

ps. for even more information on Camponotus, check out these other blog posts we've written that mention this cool ants!

Hello,

I would like to know if there is any sense to make out of the strange behavior I witnessed an ant making in my house.

I live in Long Island, NY and I guess the type of ant was a regular black carpenter ant. The first thing that struck me odd was that it had a very narrow thorax, almost like it was pinched in...But that might be 100% normal and I've just never looked that hard at an ant before.

The second thing that struck me odd was that it was standing still and seemed to be jittering its legs while they were planted on the floor, almost like wobbling them. I thought maybe it was neurological damage? Poison? I don't know.

I decided to get some cookie crumbs and a plastic cup so I can try to feed it and observe it for a little while. It did eat a bit which made me feel better. The next strange behavior I saw was that it started grooming the hell out of itself, almost manically as if it was on speed, then it proceed to bite at the bottom tip of it's abdomen. It was freaky; I thought maybe it was pregnant and ready to pop out some eggs or something. I don't think it was, though. It was really weird. I hope he wasn't sick or poisoned. I named him Mercury. I got grossed out from lying on the kitchen floor to watch all this and let it go off into the sunset...

Thanks!

Cheryl Cusimano

*****

Hi Cheryl,

The ant you found was very likely a carpenter ant, but without a more thorough description or any photographic cues, this might be hard to confirm. The "narrow thorax" you observed could have been either the petiole of an ant (the small segment joining the mesosoma and gaster that gives all ants and many other hymenopterans the appearance of having a "waist") or the constricted petiolar segment of a parasitoid wasp. Ensign wasps (family Evaniidae), for example, superficially resemble black carpenter ants and are familiar (if less common) interlopers in domestic settings given their predatory association with cockroaches.

The jittering movement is likewise difficult to explain without further observation. If the insect was indeed an ensign wasp, you might compare this behavior with descriptions of the wasp's peculiar bobbing movements, which involve jerking its abdomen up and down like a hatchet.

The meticulous grooming behavior you observed is characteristic of almost all insects, especially after a meal. Whether this particular individual was an ant or a wasp, obsessive self-grooming would not be unexpected following close inspection of foreign objects like cookie crumbs or plastic cups.

Hope this helps,

Alexandra Westrich & the AntAsk Team